


Oh Captain, My Captain

by fireflysglow_archivist



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-29
Updated: 2006-07-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 08:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14469240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflysglow_archivist/pseuds/fireflysglow_archivist
Summary: Mal’,s grief for his fallen comrades at Serenity Valley is seen through River’,s eyes.  She finds they share a common thread.





	Oh Captain, My Captain

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Firefly’s Glow](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Firefly%27s_Glow), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Firefly's Glow collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/fireflysglow/profile).

Oh Captain, My Captain

## Oh Captain, My Captain

Serenity was rarely ever quiet. There was always the constant hum of the engines or the cooling system. Mix that in with nine people trying to share the same limited space, because even though Serenity wasn't really small by any means, it felt that way after you'd been locked up inside her flying from place to place over long stretches of time. You're always going to find a jumble of different noises and sounds floating throughout the many corridors and rooms. Almost everyone was tucked away in their bunks and the normal sounds of chatter and laughter had finally died away. Serenity herself kept up a constant hum, reminding all aboard that she never slept, never rested. She was the constant, the vessel that held everyone to her captain. 

Mal stared idly out into the black. Though the ship around him was at her quietest, his mind was filled with the sound of long-ago gunfire and screams. He couldn't see the stars that lay directly ahead of him. They could have winked out one by one and he would have never noticed. His inner eye saw blood, bodies, and the brilliant yet deadly orange burst of explosives, mortar rounds, and tracers. His nose could smell cordite, dirt, decomposition. His tongue tasted salt and the coppery traces of blood from a long ago split lip. There was no recycled air from the ventilation system of the ship where he was. Lost in a losing battle, vanished to a place that held nothing but the darkest of memories, nothing registered to him but the memory of Serenity Valley. 

Not even River's sudden presence. 

There's a saying that goes back to the time of Earth-That-Was...back to those who had seen battle. River had been able to study some of that. Certain books and histories had been taught to her at the Academy before the testing began. It was called "the thousand yard stare." Men in battle, especially those who had seen atrocities of the worst kind, accomplished this stare. Able to see way back into the past, closing out everything around them, live on a distant plane for the space of a few seconds to a few hours. River knew she was capable of doing the same. Even if she didn't want it to happen, sometimes her mind would fly to a time of long ago in the place of far, far away. 

Disjointed images, fuzzed over in a haze of quick movements, mutes and distorted sounds that would suddenly crescendo to an ear-bursting pitch, River stepped closer to Mal and leaned around him, staring at the profile of his face. She leaned closer, her nose almost touching his cheek. His eyes were glazed over, his lips set in a harsh line, almost white from the pressure pressing together. She could smell his fear, his anger. She could hear names, register faces that seemed frozen in pain or anguish. The captain's world was colored in brown, black, mainly red. Always red, bright and vivid or dark and black. 

"Far, far away." She whispered into his ear. 

Mal's head snapped around almost too quickly, his neck cracking loudly in the process in the stillness of the room. Noses touching, eyes staring into each other, River lifted her hand and laid it on his forehead. "Sensory overload. Memory cache needs defragmenting." 

"Why in the gorram Hades are ya sneakin' round my ship?" Mal's voice was angry, yet muted. "Ya can't go creepin' up on people like that. Ain't ya never heard of privacy before? Where's that genius brother a'yours?" 

"Far, far away to happy times. Brain's on automatic shutdown, sleepmode." She moved back from him, her body flowing like water. She frowned at Mal's reddened face, looking down at the floor so a curtain of her dark hair hid her from his view. 

"You got a powerful creepy presence at the best of times. I don't need you to be up here spoutin' out nonsense to me in the middle of the night." Mal turned to look down at the piloting console, his right pinky twitching. "You best get on back to your bunk, little River." 

River gave a soft laugh, crossed her ankles, and took a seat right on the floor. She leaned her head against the arm of the pilot's chair and closed her eyes. "Can't. Brainlock. Simon snores, chainsaws and trees falling in the forest. I'm there so I can hear them." 

Mal snorted. "We can always get you your own passenger cabin. But now you're getting' me off track here, girl. You got a way about you that can turn everyone's thoughts off kilter. Bed, sleep. Don't wanna hear nothin' `bout your brother and his snorin'. I'm not in the mood for a palaver." 

River tilted her head up. "No, palavers are for the living. Live flesh and beating hearts. Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Chambers of the heart pumping blood out to veins and capillaries. Ghosts are disconnected, broken threads floating in the wind. You're trying to cross the plane but you don't believe." River turned her head to look back out the viewport window. "Spirits won't answer back, they can't for you. If there's no belief their words are nothing more than a whisper in a hurricane, swept up, up, and away." Her gaze settled on one distant star, the smallest that her eye could register. She could feel Mal's stare, yet she chose to wait, to let him speak. That was the way of things, of manners and polite upbringing. Speak when spoken to, peas and thank you's. 

Mal sighed, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes. "You are just dead set on talkin' to me tonight, ain't ya?" 

"Pun." 

Mal laughed, an honest laugh. "Weren't intended. But yeah, pun nonetheless." He tapped the top of her head with two fingers and she turned her large child/woman eyes to him. "There's a reason you came searchin' me out. So, my little reader, what's this all about? My thoughts too loud and you came up to check on me?" 

"Mal, bad in the latin." 

Mal nodded his head. "So I've heard tell. Ain't never claimed to be a good man, River. Don't know if I ever could be an upstandin' righteous citizen." 

A tentative slender hand grasped at Mal's larger one, turning it over. A pale finger traced the lines there and Mal found himself holding his breath as he watched her brow furrow in a facsimile of concentration. Her hand clasped his, eyelids drooped closed. 

"Serenity Valley. The bane of your former life. You ask, why so many died? Why were you left alive?" River opened her eyes, there was a sadness there. "You weren't." 

Mal pulled his hand away. River stood up, and pushed his chair back, moving to stand in front of him. She reached for his hand again, tightening her grip on Mal's wrist as he tried to shake her off. She pressed his hand firmly to his heart. "It beats. Ba-bum, pitter pat, slow and steady, wild and racing. It's keeping you alive, and yet you're dead. Cold. Not all the time, selective animation. Part of you...it's been cut out, left behind to rot with the rest. It doesn't compute." 

"La tian ye (Jesus). River..." 

Pressing a finger to his lips, she shook her head. "Shhh...fang-xin (Don't worry), oh Captain, my Captain. Don't look for them, don't search them out. They've moved on, scattered by the wind, strewn to every corner of the galaxy. At peace, at rest." River gestured one hand around the cabin of Serenity. "No ghosts here." With her other arm, she tapped her fingers against his hand, still resting on his heart. "Only here." She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "And here." Pulling away, River stepped aside, moving in that soft and graceful way that she had at times towards the door. 

Mal's throat felt tight and hot. His breath came in giant gulps of air. "River!" He stood, walking towards her. She had paused in the doorway, one hand touching the cool metal, her bare feet on tiptoe. "How do you know?" 

A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "I believe and cross the plane, grasp the threads and tug them to me. The place beyond is empty unoccupied space. They've gone on. Must try to do the same." 

Mal frowned. "But how do you know?" 

A shrug of her shoulders. "I just know." 

Fingers sliding along, almost memorizing Serenity's metal walls, River continued on and disappeared from Mal's view. He stood there for several moments, staring at the empty doorway, trying to piece together River's disjointed communication. Gooseflesh spread along his skin, touching him with its invisible fingertips until he began to shiver. 

_I just know._

Mal walked back to the chair, grabbing a blanket from the storage compartment on the way. Once semi-arranged and comfortable, he lifted his gaze to the starfield again. 

_Brainlock... chainsaws and trees falling... broken threads floating... hurricane, swept up, up, and away... oh Captain, my Captain._ Broken words and fragmented thinking, a soft kiss. _Only here._

"It scares me that you know." Serenity hummed to Mal, trying to calm him from his thoughts. Her attempts were fruitless but she continued on as she always had, always would, so long as she had her place in the sky. "You're my ghost, little River. And I wish I knew what it was that I could do t'make you whole again." 

Mal's eyes slipped closed of his own volition, body finally relaxing and moving forward into sleep. Chin touching chest, breathing slowed, his mind went blank and all thoughts of Serenity, both the ship and the valley, faded away into nothingness. 

In the room that River and Simon shared, she lay curled on her side, facing Simon and watched him sleep the sleep of the righteous. Her fingers lightly traced the coverlet upon her bed, but she wasn't touching cotton, she was touching skin. She was lightly stroking Mal's cheek. Her eyes were sad and her thousand yard stare only went as far as Serenity's cockpit. "I'm the reflection of your shattered soul," she whispered. "I am the symbol of Serenity lost." Tears slipped quietly down her cheeks and she turned her face into the pillow to stifle the low and painful sob that welled up in her chest. "I am not a broken thread, I'm just a thread that simply ceased to exist." 

Mal's sleeping mind conjured up one image. One he wouldn't remember upon waking in the morning, only the words would be there, just at a nagging distance that he wouldn't be able to reach. 

He saw her there, on her bunk, tears staining the simple white pillow case beneath her head, dark hair spilled in a cascading shadow across her face. Her tears twinkling in the soft light that was left on to try to hold her dark monsters away. His heart would stop for just a moment; miss one beat before continuing on. Mal would never know it had happened. 

River saw him standing there before her, his form transparent and distorted like bubbles riding the wind. Her voice cracked as she spoke. 
    
    
         "O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done; 
         The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won; 
         The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
         While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: 
         But O heart! heart! heart!
         O the bleeding drops of red, 
         Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
         Fallen cold and dead."
    
    

~End~ 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title:   **Oh Captain, My Captain**   
Author:   **MajorBrat**   
Details:   **Standalone**  |  **PG**  |  **gen**  |  **10k**  |  **07/29/06**   
Characters:  Malcolm, River   
Summary:  Mal's grief for his fallen comrades at Serenity Valley is seen through River's eyes. She finds they share a common thread.   
  



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